Quebec says private colleges are selling citizenship. The data tells another story

Quebec Minister Responsible for French language Jean-Francois Roberge during Question Period at the legislature in Quebec City, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (Jacques Boissinot / The Canadian Press)

Quebec wants to cut its share of international students to ease housing pressure and protect the French language, but a recent uptick in study permits has mostly gone to people from francophone countries where the province has explicitly sought to attract more students.

Many of those permits have gone to people attending schools outside Montreal, in regions where the government has promised not to target programs that largely depend on foreign students.

Immigration Minister Jean-Francois Roberge tabled a bill earlier this month that would give the government broad discretion to cap the number of international students based on region, institution and program of study. The government could also take language into account.

Roberge said the number of foreign students in Quebec has increased by 140 per cent, from 50,000 in 2014 to 120,000 last year, a number he said is "too many." He suggested some private colleges are using education as "a business model to sell Quebec and Canadian citizenship" and pointed to two -- without naming them -- that have seen a manifold increase in international student enrolment in the last two years.

But federal and provincial numbers paint a different picture. They show a sharp increase in international students at public and government-subsidized private colleges and francophone universities that aligns with government policy. Enrolment at unsubsidized private colleges, meanwhile, has cratered.

"If we try to understand why there has been an increase in our network, it's because our colleges responded to the government's call to recruit more in French-speaking countries, and in particular (for) Quebec's regions," said Patrick Berube, CEO of the Quebec association of private subsidized colleges. "We are currently trying to understand exactly what problem the government is trying to solve with this bill."

The federal government issued about 61,000 study permits to foreign students at post-secondary institutions in Quebec in 2023, up from 51,000 the year before. The increase in permits went almost entirely to students from French-speaking countries, mostly in North and West Africa.

A 2023 strategic plan from Quebec's higher education department says that attracting international students to francophone colleges and universities is "a government priority" as part of a "global race for talent."

Starting September 2023, the government began exempting some foreign students attending francophone colleges and universities outside Montreal from international student fees, allowing them to pay the same tuition as Quebecers. The measure was an attempt to draw newcomers to different regions of the province, and to fill Quebec's labour shortage.

Nearly 85 per cent of the increase in study permits between 2022 and 2023 went to students planning to attend universities and colleges eligible for that exemption. At the Universite du Quebec en Outaouais in Gatineau, the number of study permits in 2023 more than tripled from the year before. The Trois-Rivieres campus of College Ellis, a private subsidized college, saw a nine-fold increase.

Many regional schools say they depend on international students to keep their programs afloat. Sylvain Gaudreault, president of a group representing regional public colleges, known as CEGEPs, said many colleges need foreign students to keep the numbers up in regions with declining populations.

"There are certain CEGEPs where (international students) correspond to 30 per cent of their clientele," he said.

Some regional universities also rely heavily on students from abroad. Last year, foreign students made up more than one-third of those enrolled at the Universite du Quebec a Chicoutimi, in the Saguenay region.

Roberge has said his government won't target regional programs. "The objective of the bill is to provide Quebec with new legal levers to better regulate the number of foreign students," his office said in a statement. "We want to preserve and ensure the sustainability of regional programs and take into account our workforce needs."

When Roberge announced the new legislation, he suggested schools in Montreal are the problem because almost 60 per cent of foreign students are in the Montreal area. Though he said the bill is "not about attacking the English-speaking network," he went on to say that "obviously the numbers will be reduced in the Montreal region, and we know that the major English-speaking institutions are in the Montreal region."

Since 2014, the number of international students at universities and colleges in Quebec has risen across the board. McGill and Concordia, the two English-language universities in Montreal, have the highest individual numbers in the province. But foreign student numbers at anglophone universities have stayed static since 2018, while the numbers at francophone universities have continued to rise.

Public colleges have also seen a steady upward trend, as have private subsidized colleges, with notable increases in students from Cameroon, Morocco, Cote d'Ivoire and other African countries where French is widely spoken.

Meanwhile, the province's network of private unsubsidized colleges has seen international student enrolment plummet by more than 90 per cent since 2020, after the government cracked down on what it deemed to be abusive practices.

After a 2020 Radio-Canada investigation documented a dramatic rise in Indian students enrolled at certain private colleges, the province launched an investigation and ultimately decided that students at unsubsidized colleges would no longer be eligible for post-graduation work permits, starting in September 2023.

Ginette Gervais, president of the Quebec association of private unsubsidized colleges, said the new legislation could cripple private colleges already hit hard by the loss of work permits. "If our network is targeted, it could threaten the viability of several establishments," she said in a statement.

But Berube, who represents private subsidized colleges that were unaffected by the decision, claimed the change to work permits effectively solved the problem of Quebec diploma mills. He said the new bill "is tackling a problem that has already been resolved."

Though Roberge singled out private colleges when he announced the new legislation, those schools accounted for fewer than 6,000 foreign students in 2023, compared to more than 56,000 in Quebec universities.

The new bill is part of a larger attempt by Quebec to reduce the number of non-permanent residents in the province, which currently sits around 600,000. The government has been especially vocal about wanting to halve the number of asylum seekers in Quebec.

Post-secondary institutions across Canada have seen a rise in the number of asylum claims by foreign students in recent years, and Quebec schools have some of the highest numbers. Roberge mentioned the trend when he announced the bill, saying he doesn't want people to "use student visas to make asylum claims."

As of Aug. 31, Quebec was home to nine of the top 20 institutions in Canada for asylum claims this year. Many are the same regional schools that have seen big spikes in foreign students, including the Universite du Quebec a Chicoutimi, which has counted 300 asylum claims so far this year.

Here are some numbers on international students in Quebec, from federal and provincial data:

Top 5 universities for international students in 2023

McGill University — 10,783

Concordia University — 8,669

Université de Montréal — 7,061

Université Laval — 5,736

Université du Québec à Montréal — 4,373

Universities with the biggest increase in study permits between 2022 and 2023

Université du Québec en Outaouais — 1,665 students in 2023, an increase of 1,160

Université du Québec à Chicoutimi — 3,020 in 2023, an increase of 1,120

Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières — 2,760 in 2023, an increase of 900

Université Laval — 4,590 in 2023, an increase of 880

Université du Québec à Rimouski — 1,505 in 2023, an increase of 820

CÉGEPs with the biggest increase in study permits between 2022 and 2023

CÉGEP de Trois-Rivières — 345 permits in 2023, an increase of 175

CÉGEP de Jonquière — 345 in 2023, an increase of 165

CÉGEP de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue — 245 in 2023, an increase of 135

CÉGEP Limoilou — 300 in 2023, an increase of 125

CÉGEP de Granby — 170 in 2023, an increase of 115

Private subsidized colleges with the biggest increase in study permits between 2022 and 2023

Institut Teccart — 2,235 permits in 2023, an increase of 1,345

Collège Ellis, campus de Trois-Rivières — 1,140 in 2023, an increase of 1,015

Collège Supérieur de Montréal — 1,320 in 2023, an increase of 760

Collège Universel — 720 in 2023, an increase of 535

Collège LaSalle — 1,465 in 2023, an increase of 535

Private unsubsidized college enrolment

2020 — 19,225

2021 — 12,854

2022 — 7,765

2023 — 1,370

Countries that saw the biggest increase in study permits between 2022 and 2023

Algeria — 5,875 permits in 2023, an increase of 2,315

Guinea — 2,810 in 2023, an increase of 1,995

Côte d’Ivoire — 3,010 in 2023, an increase of 1,830

Cameroon — 3,225 in 2023, an increase of 1,740

Senegal — 3,025 in 2023, an increase of 1,575

Post-secondary institutions with the most asylum claims in 2024

Université du Québec à Chicoutimi — 300

Collège Ellis, campus de Trois-Rivières — 255

Université Laval — 215

Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières — 200

Université du Québec en Outaouais — 190

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2024.